BAGHDAD, Iraq — Patients, soldiers and prisoners began voting Monday in parliamentary elections, a few days ahead of the general population, while insurgent violence killed at least nine people and wounded more than two dozen, police said.

To prevent militants from disrupting Thursday's main balloting, the government said it will close its borders, extend a nighttime curfew and restrict domestic travel starting Tuesday.

In a development that could impact the general election, 13 prisoners who were apparent victims of abuse were discovered at an overcrowded detention center run by the Interior Ministry, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said.

U.S. officials hope the new parliament that will be elected can help quell the insurgency so American forces can begin heading home. The 275-member assembly — the first fully constitutional parliament since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein — will choose a new government that U.S. officials hope can win the confidence of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority — the foundation of the insurgency.

A statement circulated today and believed issued by an insurgent group said fighting would continue regardless of the vote, according to residents of a Sunni neighborhood.

An empty minibus loaded with explosives blew up today near the Kindi hospital in east Baghdad, killing three civilians and injuring 13, including five police officers, authorities said. Police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said the van's driver abandoned it and ran.

Clashes with security forces and militants killed two police officers and injured nine, police said. Another two people were killed in a drive-by shooting in the southern Dora district of Baghdad.

In Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi woman and injured five other people.

A U.S. soldier was killed today in a bombing in Baghdad and another American soldier attached to the Marines died the day before in a suicide bombing west of the capital, near the city of Ramadi, the U.S. command said. The deaths brought to at least 2,144 the number of U.S. military members killed in Iraq since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Today's early voting saw the first of 1,500 patients cast ballots at Baghdad's central Yarmouk hospital, election officials said.

"The election process is running very well," said Yousif Ibrahim, director of the election center. "There is a big hall for patients who can easily walk and the election committee moves a box around to the wards where there are patients who can't leave their beds."

About 4,000 Interior Ministry Police officers and Iraq Army soldiers voted at Samoud School in the predominantly Shiite northern Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah.

On Tuesday, the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi voters living outside the country can begin casting their ballots at polling centers in 15 countries, including the United States, Canada and Australia. That voting also ends Thursday evening in each of those countries.

Suspected insurgents held in U.S. or Iraqi detention but who have not been convicted of an offense, are eligible to vote, Iraqi officials said. Saddam — who is jailed and facing trial for the deaths of more than 140 Shiites in 1982 — also has the right to vote but it was not known whether he would.